Last winter (1999), I drove from Washington to New York on what
I'm certain was one of the coldest days of the year. Factoring
in the windchill, temperatures must have plunged well below zero. I
foolishly stored my notebook computer in my car overnight when I
stopped at a friend's house in Princeton, New Jersey,
completely forgetting it'd get icier than a deep-freeze after
dark.
The next morning, I took the portable into a diner to catch up
on some correspondence. The laptop wouldn't start—the
keyboard felt very cold to the touch; the screen was dark and
looked gelatinous. My heart almost stopped, and I thought:
"This is it. I've just destroyed a $3,500
computer."
Fortunately, the hardware thawed out a few minutes later. But
not every story has a happy ending. Gadgets are damaged or
destroyed at a higher-than-normal rate by road warriors, wiping out
data and leading to hours of lost work time. According to data
protection and recovery firm ONTRACK Data International Inc. in
Minneapolis, 32 percent of computer data perishes because of human
error. That figure includes, but isn't limited to, equipment
being dropped, mishandled or exposed to the elements.
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That's not the only thing travelers have to worry about. New
personal digital assistants are getting so small, they're
almost as easy to misplace as airline tickets and passports.
A couple years ago, frequent travelers didn't need to
concern themselves with these issues. Laptop computers weighed as
much as today's PC towers. Cell phones were as bulky and heavy
as bricks. Personal digital assistants were more cumbersome than
college dictionaries. You couldn't lose these things no matter
how hard you tried.
Today, however, the technology is smaller and more sensitive
than ever. "Travelers seem to be losing their gadgets more
often," observes Dan Koch, former chief operating officer for
Pilot Island Publishing Inc., a developer of software for the Palm
operating system. "But there are precautions you can take.
Without a doubt, this is something that people need to think about
as the technology evolves."
Here are a few tips:
Always back your data up on another computer. Personal
Digital Assistants may be "synced" to PCs to prevent the
loss of information stored on them if they go MIA.
Keep the gadgets close to you. PDAs and cell phones
should never be far from their carrying cases when you travel. Out
of the case, they're far easier to misplace.
Leave them at home. New hotel rooms now come equipped
with PCs, rendering the need for a laptop computer obsolete. If
possible, leave the easy-to-lose gadgets back at the office.
Don't pack them away. New high-powered security
scanning devices for checked-in luggage can damage magnetic storage
systems.
Christopher Elliott is a writer in Annapolis, Maryland.
Contact him at http://www.elliott.org
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